A letter to Dahlia

letter to my child that I lost

Sometimes I dream of you at night, I don’t know if I like
those dreams or hate them.  Sometimes I
see your smile, and hear your laugh.  Waking
up and remembering you aren’t there is so heartbreaking.  All the pain of the last six months comes
rushing back.  The memories of your
attack, the knowledge that you have been murdered, the knowing that you will
never come back.  I have to lay in bed
for a little while before I can get up, I have to remind myself all the reasons
that I have to get up.  I tell myself
that I need to get up and wake your brothers and sisters up, have them get
ready for school.  But all the time I am
thinking how all I want to do is lay in bed and sleep so hard I never wake up.

I get up and go through the motions of my day.  I have to tell myself over and over the
things I need to do to appear normal. 
Right foot, left foot, right foot, left foot. Wake the kids up, go
downstairs, make coffee, shower, get dressed. 
I have to say these things to myself constantly or I will forget what I
am suppose to do.  I found myself
buttoning my shirt completely wrong today, I had to undo all the buttons and do
them all again.  It was like I had lost
the ability to button my own shirt.  I am
told the memory loss may get better, no one really knows for sure.

Memory loss, comes along with trauma, the trauma of losing
you.  I’m told I don’t have to be a be a
part of the attack to have Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, that my close
attachment to you was enough.  I am told
that the bond between a mother and a child is so strong that to us the loss of
a child is the most traumatic event we can have.  Imagine me suffering from something soldiers
of war suffer from, and I have never been out of the country.  Could you ever have believed that your strong
and capable mother could become such an emotional wreck?

 I am trying to be
happy, because I know that you would never want me to be sad.  I try to find little things to smile over
every day.  Every smile brings a ton of
tears behind it, the guilt of finding any happiness without you is unbearable
sometimes.  I wonder sometimes if I will
ever feel true happiness again, or if it will always be a halfway feeling.  How can I be truly happy without you?

I miss you so much every day, I try not to think about you
because the pain is unbearable and then I feel guilt because I tried to forget.
 I try to think of ways every day that I
can turn back time.  I just need to go to
the day before, that is all I need.  I
just need that one day back, if I can have that one day I can change
everything.  I wouldn’t lose you that
way, your sister never would’ve been injured, and the rest of us wouldn’t have
to go through a life without you.

I beg everyday for your forgiveness, I was your mother and I
did not protect you when you needed me to. 
I should’ve known what was going to happen.  Protecting you was my job and I should’ve
known.  What kind of mother am I, when I
couldn’t protect my own child?  I’m told
it wasn’t my fault, I wasn’t there, there is no way I could’ve known or
protected you.  I should’ve felt it,
sensed it, my intuition as your mother should’ve told me.  I failed you and I am sorry.